This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(75)

“Our Phil?” Anders says.

“Yep.”

“Huh. Not what I expected.”

“But a not unpleasant surprise,” Isabel murmurs as she gives Phil the kind of look I haven’t seen her give any guy since Mick died.

“The other one might be more your style,” Anders says.

She gives him a look. “More my age you mean?”

“Nah. I know you like them young.”

He gets a glower for that. Wallace is looking about Rockton, his gaze here and there, taking everything in. I can almost see his thought processes—looking for electricity lines, noting the piles of lumber, checking the construction of the buildings and the layout of town and nodding throughout, as if intrigued and impressed. Phil glances about in mild horror, and I can read his thoughts even better. Dear God, I had no idea it was this bad.

“And the older gentleman?” Isabel says, her voice lowered as the men approach. “Judging by his attire, clearly a man of means. An investor, I presume.”

“You could say that. He’s Gregory Wallace. Oliver Brady’s stepfather.”

“Oh, hell,” Anders mutters.

“Yep.”

The men draw close enough for me to say, “Phil? Mr. Wallace? This is our deputy, Will Anders, and one of our local entrepreneurs, Isabel Radcliffe.”

Isabel’s eyebrows lift at the introduction. I mouth, Brothel owner?, asking if she’d prefer that introduction, and she rolls her eyes and extends her hand. Phil accepts it with a perfunctory shake, having seen and dismissed her in a heartbeat. Wallace’s gaze lingers, and he smiles, as if she is much more than he expected out here.

“Gregory, please,” he says, taking her hand and then Anders’s. “Detective? If I might speak to you alone, I believe Phil would like to talk to the sheriff.”

Phil gives him a clear What the hell? look, but Wallace only smiles and says, “I believe you and the sheriff have a few things to discuss. Or he has a few things to discuss with you. Detective . . .”

“Casey,” I say.

He nods. “Casey and I will be at the police station.”



I leave Storm with Anders. As Wallace and I enter the station, he says, “You are correct that I didn’t know where I was sending Oliver. I understood the basics, of course. A remote, northern community. Hidden. Untraceable. Designed to conceal and contain those who need concealment and containment. That seemed enough. I made the mistake of presuming this was for people like my stepson.”

“It’s not.”

“I see that now. I should have asked more questions. An associate told me this was the perfect solution, and I suppose, given what I was willing to pay, Phil’s employers had every incentive to agree with me.”

“Like Eric said, we just weren’t equipped for it.” I stoke the fire to start a kettle. “Our police force is just myself, Eric, and Will. We’re all experienced law enforcement but none of us has done correctional work. We have a volunteer militia. We have one cell.” I cross the room and open the door to show him, and then shutting it before Roy can speak. “We couldn’t leave Oliver in that for six months, so we were quickly building him a fortified unit. He escaped just before it was completed.”

“Can you take me through—?” The door opens and Dalton comes in, Phil following. Wallace says, “That was quick. Casey was just about to tell me what happened. I’m sure you’ll want to hear this, Phil. Please, continue, Detective.”

I tell the story.

“The poisoning was real,” I say. “Oliver had inside help. He was, as you might expect, protesting his innocence. That’s very easy to do when no one here can look up his alleged crimes on the internet. He claimed to have been accused of a shooting spree in San Jose.”

Phil’s head jerks up, as if he’s remembering I’d asked about the shooting.

I continue, “It was far too easy to plant doubt under the circumstances. Yet the alternative was to keep him permanently gagged, which raised suspicions among the residents—they wondered if he had something he wanted to say. We tried to walk a middle line—no gag but limited access. That failed. He found an ally, who got him the poisoned food. We had to take him to the clinic to pump his stomach. We had him restrained while recuperating, but his accomplice provided him with a knife.”

“And set the fire,” Wallace says. “As a distraction.”

“Helluva good one in a town made of wood,” Dalton says.

Wallace nods. “As his accomplice knew. I am so sorry this happened. The loss of your town leader . . .” He shakes his head. “ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t begin to cover this.”

“What was Val doing with the prisoner?” Phil asks.

“She hoped Oliver would see her as a potential ally, possibly even someone he could charm. She was trying to take a more active role in the community.”

“Which was her first mistake,” Phil says. “The leader of this town cannot become involved in such a way. It blurs lines.”

Wallace looks at him. “Are you implying that by trying to help her town, she made a fatal error?”

Phil has the grace to color. “Of course not, sir. I misspoke. Val made a questionable choice but what happened was not her fault.”

“It was Oliver’s,” Wallace says. “He is responsible for his actions, something he was never able to grasp, and that is our . . .” He shakes it off. “No blame. Not now. For now, we need to find him before anyone else dies. And then . . .” A pause as he glances away, his voice lowering. “And then we will have to make sure this never happens again, that he never poses a risk to anyone else again.”